Snow (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Turkish poet who spent 12 years as a political exile in Germany witnesses firsthand the clash between radical Islam and Western ideals in this enigmatically beautiful novel. Ka's reasons for visiting the small Turkish town of Kars are twofold: curiosity about the rash of suicides by young girls in the town and a hope to reconnect with "the beautiful Ipek," whom he knew as a youth. But Kars is a tangle of poverty-stricken families, Kurdish separatists, political Islamists (including Ipek's spirited sister Kadife) and Ka finds himself making compromises with all in a desperate play for his own happiness. Ka encounters government officials, idealistic students, leftist theater groups and the charismatic and perhaps terroristic Blue while trying to convince Ipek to return to Germany with him; each conversation pits warring ideologies against each other and against Ka's own weary melancholy. Pamuk himself becomes an important character, as he describes his attempts to piece together "what really happened" in the few days his friend Ka spent in Kars, during which snow cuts off the town from the rest of the world and a bloody coup from an unexpected source hurtles toward a startling climax. Pamuk's sometimes exhaustive conversations and descriptions create a stark picture of a too-little-known part of the world, where politics, religion and even happiness can seem alternately all-consuming and irrelevant. A detached tone and some dogmatic abstractions make for tough reading, but Ka's rediscovery of God and poetry in a desolate place makes the novel's sadness profound and moving.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

"Politics in a literary work are a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, a crude affair though one impossible to ignore," Stendhal wrote. This line serves as one of the epigraphs to Snow, Orhan Pamuk's mysterious, moving and -- yes -- political new novel, which includes a scene where guns are shot into a theater audience. Firearms notwithstanding, there is nothing crude about Pamuk's subtle work. The author of seven previous novels, he has taken as his great subject the tensions between West and East, religious and secular, in his native Turkey. His most recent novel, My Name Is Red, was an ingenious, tightly crafted tale of murder among miniaturists -- artists who illuminate manuscripts -- in 16th-century Istanbul, for which he at last garnered much-deserved recognition in the United States.

Snow, which takes place in the present day, may be Pamuk's most topical novel yet. Ka, a poet from Istanbul, has returned to his native country for a visit after 12 years in exile in Germany. When Snow begins, he is on a bus en route to Kars, a mountain city in the "poorest, most overlooked corner of Turkey," at the former border of the Ottoman and Russian empires. An old friend at an Istanbul newspaper has asked him to report on the impending municipal elections as well as an epidemic of suicide among teenage girls, the latest of whom is one of the "head-scarf girls," a group of young women who have been barred from the secular university for covering their hair. In hope of reuniting with Ipek, a beautiful former classmate who now lives in Kars, Ka agrees.

Kars is a tightly wound knot of tension between secular and religious forces, and Ka's investigations lead him into encounters with all the major players, including the charismatic Blue, an "infamous Islamist terrorist" who is in hiding after issuing a death threat against a talk-show host who insulted the Prophet Muhammad; Necip, a pious student who hopes to become the world's first Islamist science-fiction writer; and Ipek's sister, Kadife, the leader of the head-scarf girls. These forces come to a head on Ka's first evening in Kars, when an acting troupe stages a classic play called "My Fatherland or My Head Scarf." At the play's climax, the heroine rips off her scarf and burns it, and the religious youths in attendance begin to riot. Soldiers storm the stage, opening fire and killing a number of the audience members.

This is the briefest possible introduction to Snow's elaborate plot, which works its way by twists and turns through numerous digressions, dialogues and genres. Pamuk's work is reminiscent of the great storytelling classics -- The Thousand and One Nights, Boccaccio's Decameron or Jan Potocki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa, with their bawdy comedy, intricate design and mystical overtones. At times Ka plays the traditional role of the trickster: In one brilliant sequence, he negotiates a statement of unity between the city's Islamist, Kurdish and socialist leaders for the sole purpose of luring Ipek's father out of the hotel where they live, so that he can make love to her. Elsewhere he is compared to a dervish: During his few days in Kars, he regains his inspiration for the first time in four years, and poems come to him as if dictated by a higher power.

The poems that Ka writes in Kars turn out to be governed by a "deep and mysterious underlying structure" similar to that of a snowflake, and the same is true of the novel itself. The deeper you read, the more the symmetries multiply. Nearly every character has a double, down to the narrator himself, who is eventually revealed to be a novelist friend of Ka's named Orhan, telling Ka's story after his death based on information gleaned from his notebooks. All these mirror images add up to create a dizzying effect, which is deepened by the snow that begins to fall on the first page of the novel and does not let up until nearly the end. Practically a character in its own right, it blankets the mean streets of Kars, shutting Ka and Ipek together in their hotel, casting its strange light in unexpected places and closing the roads to all traffic in or out, so that the city becomes a strange hothouse of nervous activity and revolutionary unrest.

This disorientation is surely Pamuk's intention. But even after the novel has come to its wrenching conclusion, the atmospheric haze is difficult to dispel. Snow has none of the tautness of My Name Is Red; its action moves thickly, at times impenetrably. Clarity is not enhanced by a tone that at times jerks wildly from knowing sophistication to faux naiveté. This is a shock after the elegant control of My Name Is Red, and the non-Turkish-reading reviewer is inclined to blame the translator, who is new to Pamuk's work. Nevertheless, Pamuk's gift for the evocative image remains one of this novel's great pleasures: Long after I finished this book, in the blaze of the Washington summer, my thoughts kept returning to Ka and Ipek in the hotel room, looking out at the falling snow.

Reviewed by Ruth Franklin
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 425 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (July 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375706860
• ISBN-13: 978-0375706868
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (146 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,988 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

238 of 260 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "No one who is even slightly westernized can breathe free.", August 22, 2004

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: Snow (Hardcover)

The rich story-telling tradition of the Middle East enlivens Turkish author Pamuk's novel about the residents of Kars, a town in the remote northeast corner of Turkey, once a crossroads for trade between Turkey, Soviet Georgia, Armenia, and Iran, but now a place of enormous poverty. Ka, a poet with writer's block, arrives in Kars at the beginning of a three-day blizzard, sometime in the early 1990s, to investigate a spate of suicides by young women forbidden to wear headscarves in school, but he is also there hoping to reconnect with his life-long love, Ipek, who is now single.

All the conflicting political and religious movements of the country are exemplified in Kars--socialism and communism, atheism, political secularism, Kurdish nationalism, and the most rapidly growing movement, Islamist fundamentalism, and Ka comes into contact with all of them. As he investigates the girls' suicides and becomes reacquainted with Ipek, he also witnesses the coffeeshop shooting of the Director of Education, the man who has carried out the government's orders to ban the "headscarf girls" from school. His assailant is a young member of the Freedom Fighters for Islamic Justice, a group Ka comes to know. A military coup at the National Theater begins when soldiers burst in, shoot randomly into the audience, kill a number of people, then round up "dangerous" citizens, including some of the people Ka has visited. Ultimately, Ka's life is in danger, and Ipek must choose whether to go with him to Germany or to stay in Kars.

Articulate in its depiction of almost inexplicable contradictions, Snow is not a western novel and does not adhere to western literary conventions of plot or character. The execution of the Director of Education, the army coup, and the follow-up are used primarily as vehicles for exploring the many competing philosophical and political movements, a focus on abstractions rarely seen in American literary fiction. The plot is absorbing for a reader who is interested in politics and religion, but the novel may be slow for readers looking for a plot- or character-based novel. The characters, while intriguing, are more representative of types than individuals.

Published in Turkey and Europe before September 11, the novel has an ominous prescience to it. Rich with insights into rapidly rising fundamentalist movements and why they seek our destruction, this haunting novel is many-leveled, beautifully wrought, and complex. Packed with ironies, dark humor, and enough symbolism to keep a symbol-hunter busy for days, this realistic depiction of the environment in which extremist movements take root and flourish is a chilling reminder of how the world has changed. Mary Whipple

110 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I challenge you to stay awake., November 11, 2004

By	Charles (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snow (Hardcover)

Reviewers of Orhan Pamuk seem to fall into two categories: those who find his work breathtakingly brilliant; and those who find it distant, overly-intellectualized, and downright dull. As much as I'd like to belong in the first category, there's no denying I'm smack-dab in the second. This, despite the fact that I consider myself a patient reader and have long been fascinated by Pamuk's native Turkey.

The book's central character is a poet named Ka. Its setting is the Turkish frontier town of Kars. What falls throughout the book is snow, which, translated in Turkish, is "kar." Hmm. Let this be your first warning that you are deep in the throes of post-modernist art.

The plot of "Snow" is drawn straight from headlines in Turkey today. Religious young women, pressured by the State to take off their headscarves, are committing suicide. While Pamuk has plenty of value to say about this and other issues which define modern day Turkey -- on the crossroads of East and West -- the problem is how he goes about saying it:

'Does your father have to be out of the hotel for you to get into bed with me naked?' asked Ka.
'Yes. And he hardly ever leaves the hotel. He doesn't care for the icy streets of Kars.'
'All right then, let's not make love now. But let's kiss some more,' said Ka.
'OK.'
Ipek leaned over Ka, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, and they enjoyed a long and sensual kiss.

Hmm. Maybe it's not fair to blame Pamuk since his prose must first be dragged through the filter of translation. Is it really possible to create elegant English from Turkish -- a language rich in suffixes but dirt-poor in vocabulary, with paragraph-length sentences that run, from the western perspective, precisely in the wrong direction?

Perhaps not. But so what? "Snow" is boring. It's boring in the same way that "The White Castle" was boring, and in the same way that "The New Life" was boring (and incomprehensible!). And there's just no excuse for boring. Great novels inform -- but great novels also entertain.

This is not a great novel. Once again, Pamuk gives the reader a blizzard of ideas, accumulating to remarkable depth. But reader beware -- this just makes for a long, cold slog.

Note: No need to struggle with Pamuk's high art to get a fictional taste of Turkey. Try "Savarona" by J. Patrick Hart, "Blood Tie" by Mary Lee Settle, and the vintage "Towers of Trebizond" by Rose MacAuley.

155 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars " . . . a terrorist is first of all a human being. . .", September 5, 2004

By	Susan C. Bentler "Madam Book Nerd" (Alexandrai , VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Snow (Hardcover)

"One of the pleasures of writing this novel, was to say to my Turkish readers and to my international audience, openly and a bit provocatively, but honestly, that what they call a terrorist is first of all a human being. Our secularists, who are always relying on the army and who are destroying Turkey's democracy, hated this book because here you have a deliberate attempt by a person who was never religious in his life to understand why someone ends up being what we or the Western world calls an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist."

-Orhan Pamuk

Whether you are new to the writings of Orhan Pamuk or like me, a convert to his work in translation, you will find the book, "Snow," is packed, nay; overflowing with Turkish humanity. In Orhan Pamuk's self-avowed first (and last) political novel, the disaffected and somewhat anesthesitized inhabitants of Kars find their imperfect voice in his newest novel. Through mad-cap theatrical coup and broad, windy statements to an imagined and unhearing "Western Press," the reader is ingeniously treated and sometimes led by the nose through the complexity of an Islamic society that desires access to its past and admittance to the modern world.

Therein lies the rub.

Understanding is everything, although it can't immediately change anything. The readers of "Snow" will find many intricately-drawn zany characters, who represent a spectrum of political fundamentalist Islam; its adherents, admirers and detractors. All are deliciously served up on an exotic Turkish platter and are no less appealing for the remote locale.

As a reader, I am consistently amazed by Mr. Pamuk's stellar ability to give authentic, credible voice to a wide array of eccentric characters, each effortlessly recognizable for all their foible. There is a remarkable, transcendent levity to Pamuk's depiction of what are deeply tragic events; a rather mystical take on the "ship of fools" theory of life. When a young fundamentalist student in the book expresses his desire to become the "first Islamic science fiction writer" it is wistful, encouraging and poignant statement. The people of Kars do not by any means lack for voice. What they lack is a stable political vehicle that allows a coherent telling of their tale.

The varying degree of political involvement portrayed in the aloof dreaminess of love-sick Ka, ex-leftist, poet and main character, the complex hyperbole of Blue, fundamentalist outlaw, and Kadife, a forthright "westernized" girl from Istanbul converted to head-scarf activism represent the voices we don't usually hear behind the sad ubiquity of exploding bombs.

There are plenty of Pamukian literary devices in this novel that address the author's recurring themes and symbols. These have to do with questions of identity and metaphysics. Some note has been made in reviews here (USA) pondering the possible meaning(s) of Ka's name. I am told the author was influenced by Kafka. If readers of "Snow," desire a clue to the meaning or significance of the town's name, ("Kars") see the ending pages of "The New Life (also highly recommended)."

Every author has his own retinue of literary device and Mr. Pamuk continues to employ his own abundantly. The symbol of snow (in Turkish, "kar") is both tender metaphor and unifying symbol. Snowfall covers everything in the novel (and everyone) indiscriminately, possessing the miraculous nature of each snowflake's distinct design. Distinct design also aptly describes the Kars citizenry.

As I was finishing this valuable, well-written book, an Islamic faction in Iraq was holding two French journalists hostage, demanding that France lift its ban on the wearing of head-scarves by Muslim girls in French public schools. The underlying controversy of the book? A ban on head scarves in Turkish public schools by the state officials of Kars, resulting in a wave of suicides by young girls. Or was that the actual reason? Decide for yourself, by reading "Snow". One of the great fortuitous compliments I imagine an author receives (to his probable chagrin) is life attempting awkward imitation of his art. (Mr. Pamuk began this book before 9/11).

Understanding is everything, even when it changes nothing. Perhaps it is all we at times, can do.